The Books It Girls Are Actually Reading

This fashion week has been one for the books. Designer Anna Sui staged a show in the famed rare books room of the Strand to debut her fall 2024 collection, which was inspired by the Agatha Christie character Miss Marple and the first editions of Virginia Woolf. Across town, supermodels like Emily Ratajkowski, Irina Shayk, and Paloma Elsesser cat-walked their way through the New York Public Library in Tory Burch’s fall 2024 ready-to-wear collection. And while model Kaia Gerber opted out of any fashion week appearances, she still made a splash on the cover of the Wall Street Journal’s magazine wearing $4,180 leather Courrèges pants. The headline? “She Was Born to Be a Supermodel. She Wants to Build a Literary Empire, Too.”

Fashion’s embrace of the book world isn’t novel by any means. In 2021, Valentino released nine text-only ads to promote a collection, featuring works from authors like Ocean Vuong and Lisa Taddeo. And last winter, Rachel Comey collaborated with the New York Review of Books on a collection.

But the more the fashion world — and the women who populate it, like Gerber, Emma Roberts, and Dua Lipa, who all run their own book clubs — double down on their bookishness, the narrower the scope of works being featured becomes. They tend to focus on literary fiction written by fashionable women like Sally Rooney (Normal People), Emma Cline (The Guest), and Raven Leilani (Luster), all of whom have been featured in at least one of, if not all of, Gerber & Co.’s clubs.

Despite the very real success of these writers’ books, their popularity pales in comparison to the types of books that women today are by and large favoring: romantasy.

“What’s so great about romantasy is it really brings back that childhood feeling of adventure that made you love reading in the first place.”

The romantasy genre combines aspects of fantasy (e.g., worldbuilding, magic systems) with hallmarks of romance novels (e.g., enemies-to-lovers arcs, happily ever afters). Last year, sales of these books increased by 42%, and Goodreads added a Best Romantasy category to its yearly Choice Awards. Leading the pack is author Sarah J. Maas, whose eight Throne of Glass books, five editions of her A Court of Thorns and Roses (ACOTAR) series, and three Crescent City novels have sold a combined 37 million copies worldwide in 38 languages.

The plots of romantasy books often stand in stark contrast to the more refined stories preferred by the fashion set — ACOTAR, for example, follows a mortal girl who’s captured and taken to the “fae world,” where she falls for an immortal faerie — but more and more “cool girls” are coming out of the shadows to declare their love for them: The White Lotus’ Haley Lu Richardson shared an Instagram story of Maas’ A Court of Mist and Fury; Call Her Daddy’s Alex Cooper posted a TikTok announcing that she’d jumped on the Fourth Wing bandwagon; and Taylor Swift bestie and former Victoria’s Secret Angel Lily Aldridge shared a snap of herself reading Maas while cozied up on a private jet.

And while we can thank authors like Maas and Fourth Wing’s Rebecca Yarros for introducing romantasy to this crowd, die-hard readers of the genre like Iman Hariri-Kia look for books that aren’t given the midnight-release treatment, particularly those written by more diverse authors. “There are a lot of wonderful marginalized authors building incredible worlds within the romantasy space, like Tracy Deonn, whose Legendborn series features a Black female lead and is a masterclass in writing representation without tokenization,” says Hariri-Kia, author of A Hundred Other Girls and The Most Famous Girl in the World, out Sept. 17. (She also mentions An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir, Coven of Ruin by T.K. Tucker, and Lore of the Wilds by Analeigh Sbrana.)

“Hot girls love fairy smut!” Scammer author Caroline Calloway, who also runs the bookstagram account @readingmakesyouhotter, tells me. “What’s so great about romantasy is it really brings back that childhood feeling of adventure that made you love reading in the first place, but in a way that’s tailored to the adult psyche in a very sexy, pleasurable, electric, and erotic way. It’s the best of both worlds, so what’s not to love?”

Well, many women aren’t loving the shame they’ve experienced for reading these “less prestigious” books.

Model Emma Brooks’ own mother couldn’t understand why she bothered with the genre. “I was reading Iron Flame during Thanksgiving, and I love my mom, but she was like, ‘I think you should just read something different,’” she recalls. Brooks will often share what she’s reading across her social media profiles, garnering praise when she posts books like The Guest by Emma Cline or Jen Beagin’s Big Swiss. But when she throws a pic of Victoria Aveyard’s Red Queen on main, the response is… different. “I feel the stigma anytime I make videos about fantasy. It’s more of a change of tone, where someone doesn’t really take me as seriously the moment [I post it] — mainly men though; women get it.”

For comedian Brooke Averick’s (@ladyefron on TikTok), the biggest hurdle was getting over her own internalized judgment. “My roommate in college was reading [ACOTAR] five years ago, and she was talking about being in love with this man with wings. I was so narrow-minded, like, ‘That’s just not something I’d ever be into,’” she says. But after being inundated by BookTokers spreading the series’ gospel, Averick caved. She’s so obsessed with the books that she has a “little book club” with fellow comedian Brittany Broski, where they read A Court of Silver Flames. “I text her [about the books] because I’m so emotionally invested that I need someone to talk to for support.”

Averick and many of the other women I spoke to all stress that just because these books have mass appeal, it doesn’t mean that they can’t be artful in their own right. “Executing something that is good, regardless of whether it falls into a commercial or more erudite category, is what I care about,” says Jessica Knoll, the bestselling author of Luckiest Girl Alive and Bright Young Women. “[With ACOTAR], I found that the characters were able to be vulnerable without annoying me, and that’s a hard thing to write. And it’s very difficult [to write] an erotic setup where you’re helpless to someone who is much more powerful than you and whose desire for you is all consuming. It’s the foundation of many of my own fantasies,” she says.

While some readers may judge romantasy, its fans have found more than enough camaraderie amongst the fandom. Be it on BookTok or at events like the midnight release of Iron Flame, where fans came dressed as the characters and swapped friendship bracelets as if they were at Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. “I’m 26, but I have friends well into their 30s reading these books, as well as girlfriends younger than me,” says Broski, who’s been an avid romantasy reader since discovering Twilight in middle school. “I feel like I’m back in this girlhood state where I’m just geeking out with my girlfriends, sending ACOTAR memes back and forth to each other.”

And clearly not everyone’s judgmental about it — just look at Maas, who managed to score a coveted spot in the front row of Tory Burch’s library spectacular. Who’s to say a book club endorsement won’t come next?